Radiocarbon dating dinosaur bones

Carbon-14 Found in Dinosaur Bone

The preferred method of dating dinosaur fossils is with the radiometric dating method. And the result of this accepted method dates dinosaur fossils to around 68 million years old. Consider the C decay rate. The theoretical limit for C dating isyears using AMS, but for practical purposes it is 45, to 55, years. If dinosaur bones are 65 million years old, there should not be one atom of C left in them. Dinosaurs are not dated with Carbon, yet some researchers have claimed that there is still Carbon in the bones.

So what needs to be done about this inconsistency? Do these data indicate that a more accurate method needs to be derived? What solutions are available for increasing accuracy of the tests? Or do we need another dating method all together? From the rariocarbon linked above:. Carbon is considered to be a highly reliable dating technique. It's accuracy has been verified by using C to date artifacts whose age is known historically. The fluctuation of the radiocarbon dating dinosaur bones of C in the atmosphere over time adds a small uncertainty, but contamination by "modern carbon" such as decayed organic matter from soils poses a greater possibility for error.

Thomas Seiler, a physicist from Germany, gave the presentation in Singapore. He said that idnosaur team and the laboratories they employed took special care to avoid contamination. That included protecting radiocarbon dating dinosaur bones samples, avoiding cracked areas in the bones, and meticulous pre-cleaning of the samples with chemicals to remove possible contaminants.

Knowing that small concentrations of collagen can attract contamination, they compared precision Accelerator Mass Dinoaur AMS tests of collagen and bioapatite hard carbonate bone mineral with conventional counting methods of large bone fragments from the same dinosaurs. These, together with many other remarkable concordances between samples from different fossils, geographic regions and stratigraphic positions make random contamination as origin of the C unlikely". There is a lot of discussion radiocarbon dating dinosaur bones this issue on this internet, so I think this question may be worth addressing seriously.

The main point of the debate seems to be the following:. Over the past decades, several research groups of self-proclaimed creationist scientists have claimed discoveries of dinosaur bones that they have managed to date, using radiocarbon dating methodsat some age which is a lot below the 'usual' i. The age that these groups claim to find is usually on the order of radiocarbon dating dinosaur bones or tens of thousands of years old.

Radiocarbon dating dinosaur bones particular example you bring up is one of the most famous such cases. The claims are really quite dinksaur, when taken at rwdiocarbon value, and therefore should be examined thoroughly. In this answer, I will try to go through this story boness great detail, hopefully exposing the reasons why this work is not taken seriously by scientists.

A radiocarbon dating dinosaur bones team from the CRSEF, or Creation Research, Science Bts jimin and apink hayoung dating Foundation, led by Hugh Miller, has claimed to have dated dinosaur bones using radiocarbon methods, determining them to be no older than several dozens of thousands of years old. Let's look at their research methodology in detail indicated by bullet points:.

As it radiocarbon dating dinosaur bones out, Miller's research group obtained their sample in quite a remarkable way. In fact, the creationist posed as chemists in order to secure a number of fragments of fossilized dinosaur bone from a museum of natural history, misrepresenting their own research in the process of doing so. When the museum provided the bone fragments, they emphasized that they had been heavily contaminated with "shellac" and other chemical preservatives.

Miller and his group accepted the samples and radiocarbon dating dinosaur bones the museum that such dinoeaur would not be problematic for the analysis at hand. They then sent it to a laboratory run by the University of Arizona, where radiocarbon dating could gones carried out. To get the scientists to consider their sample, the researchers once again pretended to be interested in the dating for general chemical analysis purposes, misrepresenting their research.

Let's take a little pause to consider the general issue of misrepresenting your own research. It is understandable that Miller et al. Thus, it appears that Miller et al. This, of course, raises some ethical questions, but let's brush these aside for now. We proceed with the examination of the research done by Miller and his fellow researchers from the CRSEF. At a horizon radiocarbon dating dinosaur bones 40, years the amount of carbon 14 in a bone or a piece of charcoal can be truly minute: Consequently equally small quantities of modern carbon can severely skew the measurements.

Contamination of this kind amounting to 1 percent of the carbon in a sample 25, years old would make it appear to be about 1, years younger than its actual age. Such contamination would, however, reduce the apparent age of radiocarbon dating dinosaur bones 60,year-old object by almost 50 percent. Clearly proper sample decontamination procedures are of particular raeiocarbon in the dating of radiocarbon dating dinosaur bones old artifacts.

It is clear that the sample provided by Miller did not under go any 'sample decontamination procedures' at all, and it is therefore strongly questionable to which extent it can be used to obtain a good estimate of the age of the bones. Furthermore, it appears less than certain that the carbon found in the bones actually had anything to do with them being dinosaur bones.

In the article by Leppert, we find:. Hugh Miller generously provided me with a copy of the elemental analysis of one of their dinosaur fossils. The predominant suite of elements present and their relative percentages including the 3. There is absolutely nothing unusual about these fossils and no reason to think the carbon contained radiocarbon dating dinosaur bones them is organic carbon derived from the original dinosaur bone.

They were, in fact, not bone. These results corroborated radiocarbon dating dinosaur bones paleontological theories that assert that these fossiles presumably were 'washed away' over long periods of time ddating ground water, replacing the original bones with other substances such as the minerals naturally present in the water, implying that this sample could not tell you anything about when a dinosaur lived or rather, died.